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Sobers: 'Australia Will be Dethroned'

Fri, Feb 14, '03

Cricket legend Sir Garfield Sobers has tipped either West Indies
or India to win the World Cup and dethrone reigning champions
Australia.

"Everyone has Australia as the number one team but I don't
believe that Australians are going to win the World Cup," Sobers
said. "I believe that somewhere, probably West Indies will have a
good chance as well as India and Sri Lanka," Sobers told
reporters.

"I think the lower teams have got a tremendous chance of winning
the World Cup. They realise there is an opportunity for them in
one-day cricket and they build their game particularly for the
World Cup," Sobers said.

"I think that is where you are going to find teams like New
Zealand and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is always a force to reckon with
at the one-day level," he said.

"Australia do have Adam Gilchrist, who is known as one of the
best one-day players. Matthew Hayden is the kind of player who
could tear the bowling apart, and captain Ricky Ponting, so they've
got fairly good one-day players.

"But I think the other teams have concentrated more on
limited-overs cricket because they can't really live up to
Australia's standard in Test cricket at present.

Sobers also said Brian Lara remains the number one batsman in
the West Indies team and will be a big factor in the team's
fortunes during the tournament. "Lara is always going to be a force
to reckon with and he is always going to be a great contributor to
West Indies' cricket," he said after West Indies humbled mighty
South Africa by three runs in the opening game on Monday.

Sobers said it was unfair to talk about leaving Lara out of the
side on account of his injuries. "Brian's last injury was something
he could not have helped," noted the former champion all-rounder,
who scored 8032 runs and captured 235 wickets in 93 Tests. "He
played with it. He scored a hundred and you get a lot of talking
about Brian because West Indies did well without him."

"I think Brian is a force in West Indies cricket and he is
still, as far as I'm concerned, the number one batsman in the West
Indies team," Sobers said.